Traditional surgical procedures for pathologies located deep within the body can cause significant trauma to intervening tissues. These open procedures often require a long incision, extensive muscle stripping, prolonged retraction of tissues, denervation and devascularization of tissue. Accordingly, minimally invasive surgery provides several advantages over conventional open-incision surgery because it involves creating small incisions or portals in the patient to access percutaneous bone, organs, and soft tissues. Small incisions are less traumatic to the patient and they provide for accelerated recovery and convalescence. Minimally invasive surgery can also be less time consuming and less expensive than conventional surgery.
Minimally invasive surgical approaches are particularly desirable in spinal surgery because of the need for access to locations deep within the body and the risk of damage to vital intervening tissues. Several new spinal surgery techniques have been developed that utilize percutaneous access devices, such as cannulas and trocars, to introduce surgical instruments and/or implants into a surgical site. These recent developments have yielded a significant improvement in reducing recovery time and post-operative pain because they require minimal muscle dissection and they can often be performed under local anesthesia.
The use of percutaneous access device in spinal surgery can, however, present difficulty in introducing implants and/or instruments into a surgical site since percutaneous access devices limit the surgeons ability to control movement of instruments and devices passing therethrough. Often the percutaneous access devices have an inner diameter that is smaller than the length of the implant and/or instrument being received therein. Most percutaneous access devices also only permit direct, in-line access to a surgical site, thus making it more difficult to manipulate and/or control the instrument and/or implant.
Accordingly, there remains a need for methods and devices for introducing implants into a surgical site using minimally invasive techniques.